Trump mocked by China over Latin America

Donald Trump wants the US to dominate Latin America again by weakening the region’s ties with China. And on 7 March, he brought the leaders of “13 like-minded countries” to a Trump resort in Florida for a “Shield of the Americas Summit”. The Chinese embassy in the US, however, mocked the president’s new pet project.

Trump-bootlickers accepting US shackles

Despite a smokescreen promise of using “lethal military force” to rehash drug-war failures of the past, the military alliance of Trump-bootlickers is really a demonstration of US intentions in Latin America. It used brutality in the past to get its way, and it’s willing to do so again now.

The Chinese embassy summed the move up as an attempt to ‘shackle‘ countries throughout the region to US power:

After decades of forcing their submission, the US allowed nations in the region a bit more freedom after the Cold War ended. And with some democratic gains, many people in the region sought alternative paths. This saw US economic dominance decrease and cooperation with China increase.

Billionaires have long sought quieter means to get Latin American countries to shackle themselves to the US again. And they’ve got their way in numerous resource-rich nations in the region. But Donald Trump’s tariff pressures, bullying, assassinations, abductions, and blockades have tried to tip the balance even further.

Trump’s regime is desperate to weaken China’s influence in Latin America and, unable to compete economically, it has resorted to militarism again. But for those who lived through the Cold War, the name ‘Shield of the Americas’ may sound all too similar to the notorious ‘School of the Americas’.

School of the Americas / WHINSEC

Most of the countries whose right-wing leaders attended the ‘Shield of the Americas Summit’ also have a dark history with the ‘School of the Americas‘ (SOA), the Pentagon’s “covert warfare” tool that spent decades embedding brutally repressive techniques into militaries throughout Latin America.

Graduates from the military school served elite US interests in Latin America so the US Army didn’t need a repeat of Vietnam closer to home. And some of Latin America’s most notorious dictators passed through SOA’s halls before killing and torturing hundreds of thousands of people back home.

SOA graduates put their lessons into practice from Argentina to El Salvador and Brazil, and from Nicaragua to Venezuela. And despite SOA’s 2001 rebranding as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), graduates have been pushing US interests well into the 21st century, from Honduras to Chile and Bolivia.

SOA Watch, a nonviolent grassroots movement campaigning against such training, has faced hostility from the US government for its work. And as its national organiser Hendrik Voss explained:

The purpose of the school is to maintain U.S. hegemony over the Western Hemisphere, and it is also a tool to maintain white supremacy over the non-white populations of this hemisphere.

The training… is among the root causes of migration that force people to flee their countries in Latin America. SOA/WHINSEC-trained soldiers are the military muscle that keeps in place a system guaranteeing profits for the elites—and exploitation for the poor.

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The Trump regime has now created the US Army Western Hemisphere Command (USAWHC), to which WHINSEC now reports directly. WHINSEC Commandant Col. Eldridge R. Singleton said the shift would help the school grow its influence. He also explained that:

In Fiscal Year 2025, WHINSEC graduated 781 students from over a dozen countries. Since opening in January 2001, WHINSEC has graduated over 37,000 students from over 30 countries.

The US has trained Latin American forces through other institutions too, but the School of the Americas stands out for its notoriety.

The US return to dominance is not inevitable

The creation of USAWHC seems to be an effort to make the US “preeminent” in the region again. And the ‘Shield of the Americas’ seems to be an extension of this aim. As John Griswold at the Common Reader explained, the Trump regime wants to show Latin America is “a priority theatre” for the US.

Trump’s Republican administration, Griswold said, is shaking off past rhetoric about ‘democracy’ and ‘international law’ (which Democratic support for Israel’s genocide enabled). And it’s openly showing it will use military power to protect US interests and “access to key terrain” in the region, while weakening China’s.

Panama is one country bowing to Trump’s will. While the US regime has pressured Panama to move away from China, it has also reopened a “Jungle Warfare” school there to show both Panama and China that it’s serious.

Trump is bringing “big stick energy” to the region. And fawning far-right governments are bringing big bootlicking energy. But three major Latin American countries — Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia (representing “more than half of the region’s GDP” and currently under left-leaning governments) — aren’t playing along.

Latin America’s relationship with China, meanwhile, won’t end overnight. So China is reacting calmly for now, despite facing an increasingly brash US competitor. And its gentle mocking of US tactics may just prompt people in the region to remember the death and destruction that come with submission to US bullying.

Featured image via Wikimedia